Reddit
What is Reddit? Reddit is a social news aggregation website that includes content rating and discussion. The site is divided into different categories, called subreddits, with the most popular posts being visible on the front page of Reddit. Reddit is free to use and once a user registers an account, they can submit links or text posts to a subreddit. Users can also post comments about their submission or others to engage discussion. Both posts and comments can be voted for or against, and the voting results, as well as a few other factors, determine how high up the post is displayed on the subreddit. How Does Reddit Support eLearning Reddit contains vast amounts of information on a variety of topics and can be a useful resource for research and online learning. Reddit content consists of peoples’ comments so it’s not referenceable material; however, if you find a good subreddit on a topic you’re researching you can have rich conversations with like-minded people and possibly be directed to academic resources that you can legitimately reference. Reddit is also very community focused so instructors could setup a subreddit for their class based on the course content and students could discuss and collaborate on that platform. Furthermore, because subreddits are open to anyone, students could be provided with additional information and discussion from people outside of their classroom. How to Register for Reddit Reddit is free to use and you can register an account here. All you have to do is provide a username, password, and e-mail address and you’re set to go. Once you’ve registered you can then explore the different subreddits and subscribe to them. It is also a good idea to unsubscribe to many of the default subreddits you automatically get subscribed to. How to Create and Maintain a subreddit Once you have your Reddit account you need to decide on a topic. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a new topic, but if it is a topic that is already available on Reddit then you’re going to have do to your best to compete with the other subreddit(s). For example, an instructor may be teaching a course about advertising design. To assist their students they could create a subreddit dedicated to advertising design that would not just be open their students but to anyone on Reddit to join. If the subreddit became popular, then the students would have a rich environment to collaborate in with their peers and other interested redditors with the instructor as the moderator of the subreddit. Pros and Cons Some pros of Reddit as suggested by Kos (2017) are * great communities; * good to get an overview of a topic; * excellent source of knowledge; * a place to get ideas quickly; * new information up-to-date by the minute. Some cons of Reddit; however, are * unattractive user interface; * users can be over critical and opinionated; * default subreddits are time wasting; * everyone you post is public. Alternatives Some alternatives to Reddit are listed below. (They are all free to use) * Voat * Hubski * Imzy * Hacker News * Empeopled Training Resources The following resources will help you to get started on Reddit. * https://mashable.com/2012/06/06/reddit-for-beginners/#6KhxnXWsTEqY * https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-is-reddit/ * https://neilpatel.com/blog/reddit-get-traffic/